Yet these three strong men though favorable to Dr.. Yung's project were unable, with all their influence, to carry it through with the Imperial Government. All the forces of conservatism would he opposed to it, the obstacles were too many, the time had not. come. In 1867 Governor Ting, the most Hing of the three to help along the educational project, secured the influence of Wen Hsiang, a Manchu, generally considered by foreigners as the ablest statesman. of is time. He undertook to present the scheme to the Grand Council, but before he was able to accomplish this, his mother died, thus retiring him from official life for three years.
Then a strange thing happened. In June 1870 occurred the Tientsin massacre (to be mentioned later.) In arranging a settlement, the Chinese Government appointed a Commission of five, three of whom were Tseng, Li, and Ting, under whose orders Yung Wing then was. THe was sent for to come to Tientsin but arrived late being at a distance. He heard of the difficulties which had beset the Commission from lack of suitable men equipped with a knowledge of foreign languages. He restated his arguments in view of this case in hand, and he succeeded in his long struggle to get his case heard on its merits. The three Governors agreed to take immediate action and to stand together, and they sent in a memorial backing it by all the means in their power. In August 187] the measure recommended was adopted by the Imperial Government and a sum equivalent to $1,500,000 was appropriated for its execution.
Yung Wing walked on air, and thanked G For two days he could neither eat nor sleep. To him the organization of the enterprise was principally: committed. A school of candidates was at once opened in Shanghai by competitive examination, and the successful ones were those we y sail out from Shanghai. The Chinese students after reaching the United States were taken into—select private families where they were taught the English language, and speedily became westernized. Reports of their denationalization soon reached Peking through Wu tzu-teng, who, knowing no English, came to Hartford as commissioner after Yung Wing had been appointed to the Chinese Legation at Washington. In the spring of 1881_a formal memorial, endorsed by Ch'en Lan-pin, the Minister at Washington, was sent to Peking, complaining of the study of unnecessary subjects by these students, their disrespectful behaviour when brought before their chiefs, their lack of patriotism, their forgetting Chinese, and others sins of omission and commission. By return mail they were all recalled. A party of them were interned in the East Arsenal at Tientsin under the charge of Mr. Wu, who treated them as naughty school-boys, cut-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.